


in its lonely and ramshackle head

by objectlesson



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: 5 Times, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beorn's House, Character Study, Drinking, Lake-town, M/M, Pining, Scent Kink, Sharing a Bed, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23865379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Thorin will always find things to blame himself for, to spear his innards upon like a shrike with its prey.or, five times they lie together and one time they ~lie together.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Comments: 88
Kudos: 459





	in its lonely and ramshackle head

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first thing I've written in this fandom I actually feel #good about! Ive been struggling to find my voice and confidence with these characters, but I think I finally did it. This is angsty, but it has a happy, or at least hopeful ending. Huge thank you to my beta who read over this one for me <3

Thorin takes first watch because it has been an achingly long day of travel, and he requires some time alone with the moonlight to recall why he’s doing this. He needs silence, solitude. No one asking things of him, expecting things from him, hanging all their hope on him as if he is a symbol rather than a blacksmith. _You are a symbol rather than a blacksmith,_ he thinks, speaking to himself in his own mind as if he were someone else. Some younger, more irresponsible dwarf favoring the thrill of adventure over the burden of responsibility, revenge, _destiny_. But sometimes he grows tired of such heavy words, buckling beneath the terrible onus of them. Sometimes he just wants to sit and smoke, to feel small under the stars. As if he is insignificant, a speck of flint in a sea of endless black. 

But just after the fire dies and the company falls beneath the sway of sleep, a red-gold head pops up from a nearby bed roll, and Bilbo Baggins makes an irritated _harrumph_ sound in the darkness. 

Thorin, of course, notices it. His gaze is drawn inevitably to Bilbo Baggins at all times, no matter how hard he tries to keep his distance, terrified of what might happen were he to allow himself to be caught in the hobbit’s irresistible orbit. Most nights he waits for Bilbo to claim wherever he may sleep so that he can lay his own bed roll as far as physically possibly from that space, enough landscape stretching between their bodies that he can successfully pull free from whatever force Bilbo unwittingly wields against him, his bones placed safely outside the magnetic field. However, on nights like tonight, whatever clearing they camp upon will only be large enough for them to all cluster around the fire, too tight, and so Bilbo is inescapable. 

Thorin looks away from him stubbornly. He is weary already from caring about someone he did not want to care about. His kin is _enough_ , he doesn’t need a hobbit and his impossible softness—his _terrible_ fragility—worrying him so. He’s tried not to worry, but he gave up on that a hundred miles or so ago, left it in the wilderness. He feels too much for Bilbo, whether he likes it or not. It is one of his many curses: to long for the sort of thing that will only end in pain. 

Bilbo rolls over a few more times, fussing and tidying his blankets, clearly uncomfortable. 

Thorin lights his pipe and tries to fight the urge to go ask him what he needs and then give it to him. So far, he’s done a magnificent job of maintaining a cold exterior where Bilbo Baggins is concerned, despite whatever war he may be waging just beneath the surface. He does not look at him for very long. He orders him about. He tries his hardest not to touch him. He contains himself, just like he contains everything else. A vast ocean of feeling, storming silent beneath stone. But then Bilbo stands, sighs, and makes his way over to Thorin before settling heavily beside him to ruin everything. “Hello there,” he says, wrapping his arms around himself. “Nice night for a smoke I suppose, isn't it?” 

Thorin exhales, trying his hardest not to cough, carefully shuffling an inch or so away from Bilbo even though they are not close enough to brush, even on accident. “You should sleep, Master Burglar. We have a long day of traveling ahead of us,” he manages to say, eyes glued firmly to the dissipating swirls of smoke he’s just let escape into the darkness. 

But Bilbo shrugs, fumbling in his own newly tattered jacket as if he brought his own pipe, then remembering he did not and sighing. “Yes, and it was a long day of traveling today and yesterday and the day before that. I am appropriately exhausted, and yet, I can’t seem to sleep. I would gladly take your watch from you, if you’d prefer to retire.” 

Thorin shakes his head, sighing. “I would not be able to sleep tonight either, even if I were to try,” he admits. Something long-buried and primal inside him wants to offer his pipe to Bilbo, but he knows he will not be able to endure the knowledge that the stem was once trapped between the fidgety, thin seam of his lips. He does not want to take it back, spit-damp, and pretend such things don’t make him long for a different future. Or, perhaps, a different self. A blacksmith, instead of a symbol.

Bilbo makes a sound and settles back. “I suppose we’re in the same dreadful boat, then. Or maybe not so dreadful…there are at least very many stars tonight.” 

And so there are. Thorin’s gaze flicks up to regard them, streaks of pale glitter dragged through the night, some brighter than others, like specks of strewn silver. “Tell me, do halflings have their own constellations?” he asks in spite of himself, knowing full well that he should be silent, that he should ignore Bilbo until he tires of this game and goes back to his bed roll, leaving Thorin alone. 

“Oh, yes, we do...there’s Rumble, the bullfrog,” he explains, pointing with a delicate hand. Thorin notices his knuckles are scrubbed raw from their journey, and he feels a pang of regret to witness such things. Bilbo’s hands were soft and undamaged only weeks before, but now they are scraped, and Thorin will always find things to blame himself for, to spear his innards upon like a shrike with its prey. “And, ah, over there, the plow-pony. Most of them are animals and flowers.” 

Thorin catches himself almost smiling and schools his expression. “Your plow-pony shares some stars with our creator, Aulë," he mumbles, tightening his fur around his shoulders defensively.

“How irreverent, I’m terribly sorry! She’s a rather stocky and important plow-pony if that helps at all,” Bilbo says, flinching as he glances to Thorin, something skittish and apologetic about the way he moves, as if Thorin might scold him for sullying the grandeur of dwarvish mythology with silly hobbit tales. Thorin supposes it’s fair for Bilbo to be somewhat nervous around him. After all, he has not made any effort to be friendly or accommodating. _It is because my hands are too rough to ever touch something like you,_ he thinks, chewing the end of his pipe before inhaling long and slow. _You grow things, I hue metal. I fear I might rip through your petals if I look too long. That is why I must keep you at arm’s distance, at least. That is why you’re too close. “_ Most of our constellations are frivolous, fun things…just meant to entertain children. If they tell stories, they’re simple ones. Nothing so grave as _creation,_ I’m afraid.” 

_“_ Do not apologize,” Thorin sighs, exhaling. And he should stop there, he should get up and leave Bilbo and tell him goodnight, but instead, he keeps talking. “Ours are all great kings or warriors,” he mumbles, gazing through the haze of smoke, blinking. “There’s Durin,” he adds, tracing the shape loosely, noting that his eyes are getting heavy. Having Bilbo beside him usually makes his heart speed, but this time, it only exhausts him. He is _tired._ Tired of living up to legend, tired of knowing the names of every fallen dwarf ruling over the night, tired of knowing he will eventually become one, tired of fearing he will fail and bring shame to the sky. Tired of resisting the awful, inconvenient draw of Bilbo Baggins. Thorin wishes he could sleep here beside him, head pillowed into the softness of his hair, which he imagines smells like the chicory and baked bread he remembers from that solitary night he spent in the shire. “Tell me more of yours.” 

“Well there’s—well. Let's see. Um, that’s the fishing pole there, just under your Durin. And, er…somewhere there’s a giant maple tree, but I can never find that one, not on nights like this when you can see _so very_ many stars. It’s easier to pick out the trunk earlier in the night, I suppose. And, oh! There’s the buttercup, right there under the bullfrog,” he prattles on. Then, after a moment, he observes, “Your eyes are closed.” He leans against Thorin, jostling him before withdrawing immediately when Thorin freezes. Bilbo is careless in that way, failing to remember he has yet to establish the same level of ease with Thorin than he has with Bofur or Balin. Failing to realize he likely never will because Thorin will never let him. 

“Hobbit constellations are dull,” Thorin lies, wishing with the idle, wild sort of hope he only feels when he’s half-awake that they _did_ share the type of dynamic where touch was allowed. Where he could listen to Bilbo Baggins talk about nothing forever. “I was not tired, but now I am. You’ll have to make up some of your own to keep me awake for watch.” 

“Or you could sleep,” Bilbo says easily, eyeing his pipe hopefully. “I’ll finish smoking that for you, and you could take _next_ watch. After all, you’re probably sleepier than I am, you carry much more during the day. Not just in terms of _physical_ weight, but—well. You know. You're the leader. And I’m nothing but a silly plow-pony,” he finishes, flashing a sweet, self-deprecating smile. Thorin would kiss it, if he were someone else. Some younger, more irresponsible dwarf favoring the thrill of adventure over the burden of responsibility, revenge, _destiny_. 

“You are not a plow-pony, Master Baggins,” Thorin snorts, caving at last and handing over his pipe, charmed beyond pragmatism by that expressive mouth and wanting something of his own to touch it, even if it will wound him in the morning. “You are a buttercup.” 

Bilbo makes a face before sputtering, “Thank you?” as if he isn’t entirely sure whether he’s just been insulted. 

He hasn’t, but Thorin will never tell him. Instead, he’ll drift off with images of small yellow flowers dotting a green hillside, the sweet-sour flavor of their stems something half-remembered on his tongue. “You will wake me when your watch is over,” Thorin says, settling with his head pillowed on his arm. “Understood?” 

“Certainly,” Bilbo says, coughing a mouthful of spicy smoke into the night. Thorin’s smoke. The thought might make his stomach seize up, were he not so very tired. “Enjoy—ah, your dreams, I suppose, if you are a dreamer. And I shall enjoy the night.” 

Thorin sleeps, but he does not dream of buttercups. He dreams of torn petals, blood under his nails. 

—-

Amongst the company, it is always Bilbo who cannot sleep. Bilbo who ends up joining Thorin in quiet restlessness while everyone else tucks together beside the fire and snores in messy tandem. 

Perhaps it is because he is the one who is accustomed to comforts and suffers the most from having them denied. Or perhaps he just _likes_ watching the stars, crowding ever closer to Thorin under the chill of the moon and gazing up, their thighs pressed flush like he’s forgotten, yet again, the way that Thorin always recoils when they touch. 

However, Thorin is finding it harder and harder to do so. 

He finds himself longing for the nights where they share space, tied together in the strange, silent understanding that has settled over them ever since Bilbo saved his life. He’s been letting more of himself show since then, bits of flesh and blood revealed in the slits Bilbo makes in his skin every time he smiles, like smiling is a blade, and Thorin is made from butter. 

Tonight, it’s cold enough that Thorin can see his own breath in every exhalation, and his hands turn to ice if he doesn’t keep his gloves on. Bilbo is sitting beside him as everyone else sleeps, attempting to mend a tear in his vest with a crude needle that he carved himself from some animal bone he picked up along the way. He keeps cursing under his breath every time he jabs himself in the finger, and it is not until Thorin risks glancing down to the pale slope of his wrist does he notice how tremulous Bilbo’s hands are, his teeth chattering in the cold. Thorin would offer his gloves, but he knows they’re too big for Bilbo, so instead he says, “It is too cold tonight for such tasks.” 

“I suppose you're right,” Bilbo murmurs, frowning before he sighs and tucks the needle into his pocket before clumsily shrugging on the vest, shoulders slumping in defeat. “Do you think it may snow?” he asks then, gaze sweeping heavenward. Thorin gets lost in the skyline of his profile for a moment, tracing over the upturned nose, the soft, tired bags under his eyes before he looks away, chewing the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood. 

“I hope not,” he murmurs. And then, as his gaze inevitably returns to Bilbo as if hooked and reeled, his eyes fall upon his wide, bare hobbit’s feet, and he finds himself asking, “Do they get chilled, on nights like tonight?” 

“Do what get—? Oh!” Bilbo says, tracking Thorin’s expression before he realizes what he means. He flushes and bends his knees, gathering his feet underneath himself as if he’s embarrassed to have attention called to one of the things that make them different. Perhaps he thinks that he blends in now, so seamlessly meshed with the company that Thorin forgets he isn’t a dwarf. Thorin never forgets, though. He spends far too much time studying Bilbo to ever forget the ways in which they differ so vastly. Herbs mashed to a paste beneath the corner of a brick. Sand washed away in the tide. Budding sprouts crushed under the weight of a steel-toed boot. Bilbo is breakable, and Thorin is one of the things that could break him. “They don’t, not really. The rest of me does, though. I’m regretting not stealing Bombur’s blanket to bring over here…he always kicks it off in the night. I suppose he runs hot. You all do, really...even now, I can feel the heat coming off you, like a small fire,” Bilbo mumbles, holding his hands out to Thorin as if warming them upon low flames. Thorin stares, breath caught in his throat, and his silence reduces Bilbo to nervous laughter as he drops his hands back into his lap. “Sorry...I may be a bit delirious with exhaustion tonight. Pity it’s too cold to sleep.” 

Thorin is sitting up to detach his fur cape without even realizing that he’s doing it. It’s a reflexive move, perhaps even a self-defensive one. It is better than Bilbo touching him, reaching out to seek the heat of his skin in the dark like a secret. “Here,” he rumbles, draping it over Bilbo’s body, careful not to brush against him even with his gloved hands. When he drops it, it falls heavily, and Bilbo makes a breathless, stunned sound. “Take this. I will not need it. As you said, we run warmer than hobbits.” 

He moves to stand when Bilbo reaches out and grabs his wrist in an ice-cold grip. Thorin’s heart stops, tripping over itself while his blood freezes. Even though _he_ is the one being touched, he feels like a brick, the sea, a steel-toed boot. Something heavy and capable of blind destruction. “Or we could share it! You do not need to be so generous on my behalf, Thorin, I am not—I’m not so weak as you think I am, really. I’m getting along quite well.” 

“It is not—I don’t think you’re weak,” Thorin breathes, twisting out of his grip, settling down onto the earth again so that he may catch his breath. His heart races against his ribcage, and he wonders if Bilbo can hear the guilty thud of it. If he knows what he does to him. “It is simply a gift. A goodwill gesture. “ 

Bilbo yawns, laying himself down and tucking the fur around his body, lips buried in it and eyes half-lidded and heavy. “I will take it, then.” He strokes over the softness, threading pale, delicate, still-scabbed fingers through the whorls for a moment. Thorin watches, trying to swallow the thickness in his throat when Bilbo adds, “I hope you don’t feel indebted to me, you know, for the whole adrenaline-slaying-of-an-orc-while-you-were-unconscious incident. I certainly do not feel like I deserve a debt.” 

Thorin scoffs and turns back to the sprawl of the sky. There are no stars tonight, their light swallowed up in the haze of fog, so there are no elders to consult, no kings and warriors watching over him, condemning a son of Durin for having fallen in love with a halfling. “I do not think you owe me,” he says, wetting his lips, loving the shape of Bilbo’s body curled up beneath the weight of his own cloak, how small and solid he looks, like a stone cast into a puddle. He would fit so easily into Thorin’s arms, were he to ever hold him. “If anything, I suppose we are even now. I saved _your_ life half a dozen times; you swung your little sword about, and it miraculously landed its mark and saved mine. All debts paid.” 

Bilbo laughs, the sound of it muffled by fur. “We shall shake on it then, Thorin Oakenshield,” he murmurs, freeing his hand from the blanket and offering it. 

And Thorin knows he should not take it, he should not touch more than he already does, he should not batter himself bloody against rock, he should not toss himself into flame. But there is only so much resistance he can demonstrate in a single day, especially when Bilbo Baggins seeks him out and warms his palms by his heat. Throws himself beneath the crush of his brick, allows himself to be swept away in his tide, lies prostrate and gasping beneath his steel-toed boot. So he takes Bilbo’s delicate hand in his own, squeezing it so that he can feel the chill of his flesh even through the leather of his gloves. 

They shake and release, and Thorin cannot speak so he doesn’t. He stares resolutely up at the empty sky instead, imagining the ghosts of stars and listening to Bilbo’s breath as it slows into something rhythmic, steady like a second yet more reliable heartbeat. 

—-

Thorin can hear the bear still lumbering around outside and wailing mournfully, crashing through brush, louder and heavier than the distant rustles of the orc army. He knows he should fear it, but in the middle of the night, with his weeks-old injuries still aching, all he can do is pity it. He, too, knows what it’s like to feel trapped in a never-ending circle, both hunted and hunting. 

He wishes he could sleep, but there’s too much at stake and not enough _time_ to rest. So he lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, watching giant, clumsy insects buzz about like something from a dream. Bilbo is off somewhere petting a cow, and Thorin might join him were he not trying his hardest not to get mired in the tar of loving too hard, too implausibly. So instead he stays and wills himself to sleep despite the incessant, heavy pain he carries with him like lead in his pockets. 

When he wakes, he’s doused in sweat and cannot remember anything from his dreams save for the blood, the ash, the ice. He rolls over gasping in the night, but the motion is aborted by a weight on his fur cloak, something heavy and trapping and warm. When he turns, Bilbo is lying there, curled up on his side and snoring, and Thorin’s heart stops in his throat just like it did in his dream, before a blade pierced his stomach and everything went black. 

But it doesn’t go black, not now. The moonlight remains, casting Bilbo’s sleeping form in a pale silver light. Thorin cannot _move_ without rousing him, so he decides he must stay, locked up here on his back in a sheen of nightmare sweat, inhaling Bilbo Baggins’s sleeping exhalations. 

They’re sweet, and Thorin wants to drown in them. He wants to taste Bilbo’s sleep breath forever, lay in the impossible valley here between heaps of straw in a stranger’s barn with a bony elbow in his side and a brow pressed to his shoulder. He rustles, near panic, and Bilbo doesn’t even stir. 

And so, and _so,_ the rest of the world seems to melt away, like the fading fragments of Thorin’s dream, like ice melting into water. And hasn't he done _enough?_ Resisted enough? Hasn’t he gripped the hilt of his sword instead of reaching for Bilbo’s wrist one hundred times over already? Hasn’t he _earned_ this, for his weeks of admirable restraint? Bilbo found _him_ , while he restlessly slept. Bilbo could have laid down anywhere, but he laid down here. In Thorin’s furs, beside Thorin’s arms, as if he _wanted_ to be held. As if he retired here, thinking of it. Hoping for it. 

Thorin considers it for an unendurable stretch of misery before he caves. He’s too tired, and Bilbo is too close, and so, and _so,_ he allows himself to shift closer and place a gentle, wondering hand upon his arm. If he wakes, Thorin will tell him. _You’re on my cloak. I cannot roll over._ But he does not wake, so Thorin is left with his palm cupping the shape of a narrow, delicate elbow. He smooths his thumb up over dirty cotton and back down again, and that is all he can suffer through before he decides to selfishly _take._ (Hasn’t he done _enough_?)

Thorin curls his arm around Bilbo’s sleeping body and draws him to his side. Soft, oily hair presses into his cheek, and he turns to inhale from it, stomach in knots, mouth flooding, and, _mahal,_ he’s never loved so deeply or profoundly or _consciously_ in the whole of his long, lonely life. _Wake up,_ he silently pleads to more silence. _Wake please, and realize how vile and demanding I am. Push free from my arms. Turn back and return home, where you will be safe, and I will not have to torture myself so._ But then themere _thought_ of Bilbo abandoning the quest is so unbearable that Thorin must draw him closer, must open his mouth in the wreck of his hair, and sob against him weakly, tasting the salt of his hair like the salt of his tears like the salt of the sea. 

As it turns out, this is what it takes to finally wake Bilbo. He stirs and groans as Thorin releases him and freezes, heart pounding in his chest so loudly that he feels like his body is rocking in time with the terrified thud. “Oh—oh, goodness, I’m so—I’m terribly sorry, Thorin,” Bilbo murmurs once he realizes where he is. Flush against a solid body, tucked into the folds of a fur cloak, his kneecaps pressed to the planes of Thorin’s thighs. “I didn’t mean—I must have been cold, you see, and—”

“Take it,” Thorin rasps, unhooking his fur and twisting free from it, rolling away so that he doesn’t have to face Bilbo Baggins and witness his flush, his loveliness, his _embarrassment._ He would press a thumb into the pinkness, were he allowed. He would watch the blood rush in. Instead, he scrubs his face with his hands and sighs. 

“Well, thank you then,” Bilbo whispers, tucking himself in, settling too close to the convex curve of Thorin’s spine. He lets out a long, rattling breath, and Thorin feels it move the loose weight of his hair. “Good night.” 

Thorin replies wordlessly; there is nothing to say that his feeling will not color crimson with blood. 

—

Rather suddenly, they are being honored by the master of Laketown. There’s fried fish and stale pastry and mug upon mug of frothing ale, the banquet hall overflowing with bodies all pressing ever closer to Thorin and the company, eyes reflective and bright and _haunted._ It’s as if every one of the citizens here is silently begging to be freed from a prison, so Thorin does not eat as much as he drinks. He shakes hand after desperate, bony hand and refills his mug, pushing rolls of bread and bruised apples into their fists as he scrambles away, nodding, bowing, trembling. 

All he wants to do is to find Bilbo. And then, after that, all he wants to do is to sleep. 

It’s not until he excuses himself outside for air that he unwittingly stumbles upon what he’s looking for. He’s standing on the attached deck that doubles as a dock, sucking in the night air and wishing it did not smell of rotting cod packed fruitlessly in salt when the door swings open behind him, and a slight figure bumps up against his arm. “Ah!” Bilbo says, looking up with hazy eyes, rosy cheeks. “There you are...I was looking for you.” 

Thorin’s stomach swoops, fizzy and hot with liquor as he turns to gaze down at Bilbo, eyes snagging upon the way the starlight catches the gold hues of his hair and makes them look silver. _And I was looking for you, Master Baggins,_ he thinks. _I am always looking for you. In any crowded room, I wonder, I measure the distance between your hand and mine._ He does not say any of those things aloud, though. He turns so that he’s looking out upon the black, glittering stretch of the water, its cold and endless body lapping against every home mired within it. “I cannot stomach it,” he admits, letting the curtain of his hair fall around his face and block Bilbo out. “That his people are so sick, starving—and yet, he gives the food to _us._ Food that he has been hoarding for himself, no doubt.” 

Bilbo sighs and shifts closer to Thorin, their bodies brushing in the night as they lean against the weak railing. “Oh, yes, the master of Laketown’s hospitality is quite misguided, I agree. But I also think that something about us being here provides some much needed hope to the people. It seems impolite not to take their food, not when they imagine such fortune in our wake.” 

Thorin inhales sharply, always stunned by the way that Bilbo manages to cut through everything else around him and find what is _polite._ What is expected. He cares neither for the practical nor the spiteful, only that which will appease. It is perhaps not an admirable trait, not by dwarfish standards, anyway, but Thorin always finds himself soothed by its clever simplicity. Sometimes, it is best not to ruffle feathers and to float away silently instead, seen and unseen. “I will not be such a king,” he mumbles, thumbing over a scab on his wrist. He doesn’t remember where it came from, for his whole body is a map of semi-healing wounds, all stacked up against each other like sediment after it has rained for days. “I will not keep things from my people when there is enough for all.” 

“I know,” Bilbo says, leaning closer, the heat of him a maddening, unfathomable thing. “Under all your—-well. Everything,” he says, gesturing clumsily and vaguely to Thorin, “you’re quite a kind, selfless, lovely fellow. Always thinking of the company, or dwarves in general, before you think of yourself. Which is _why_ I brought you… _this!”_ he announces, rummaging around in his pockets for a moment before brandishing a small, sad-looking orange. 

Thorin’s heart breaks to see it, and he feels his face soften traitorously in response. It is a tragic thing, more yellow than it should be, lopsided and sitting easily in the palm of a hobbit without strain. “And what is that?” he asks, voice nothing but a low, tender whisper.

Bilbo attempts to toss it and catch it again, but instead, he drops it and picks it up hastily, tottering where he stands. It is in this moment that Thorin realizes how drunk he is, how soft and graceless and off-balance and irresistible. “It’s an orange! I honestly have _no_ idea how it got all the way out here, must be a trade ware or import or something, but I noticed that you hadn’t eaten anything all night, and it was the _only_ food in the whole banquet pitiful enough to grab without feeling like I was _robbing_ those less fortunate than I, so I brought it to you.” He bows shallowly and hands it to Thorin, who takes it. “No one should go hungry the night before they reclaim their homeland from foul beasts.” 

Their fingers brush, and Thorin clears his throat to excuse the way that he shudders, dizzy at the contact even if it’s brief, meaningless. “My burglar,” he murmurs, setting his ale down and digging a thumbnail into the peel so that he may begin to strip it. “Always stealing.” 

“Not always,” Bilbo says lightly, grabbing Thorin’s ale off the weathered railing he set it upon and taking a long, measured swig. “Just tonight. In preparation, perhaps.” 

Thorin peels the orange thoughtfully, wincing at the way the sticky juice sluices into his hands, trying his hardest not to imagine Bilbo’s lips at the rim of his own mug, like a messy, indirect kiss. It is a painstaking chore, and he fails many times. 

Once it is naked, he splits the fruit with his thumb and hands half to Bilbo Baggins, with whom he is very, _very_ much in love. “Here,” he says softly, dirty nail dimpling the fine membrane. “Your share.” Bilbo takes it and messily separates a segment before popping it into his mouth. There is juice on his chin, and Thorin longs to wipe it away with his thumb, _his tongue,_ longs to taste the tangy sweetness, but only if it is off Bilbo Baggins’s skin. Instead, he tears his gaze away and resolutely chokes down his half of the orange. 

“You should come back in, you know,” Bilbo slurs, gazing out upon the water and swaying in place. “Everyone misses you. _I_ miss you.” 

Thorin coughs, cheeks hot even if he can see his breath plume in the night on every exhale. “I’m afraid I cannot please everyone. But I am here.” 

“Yes,” Bilbo says fondly, turning to regard him, stepping closer, _too_ close. “That you are.” 

He trips and ends up stumbling into Thorin, who catches him with two orange-sticky hands upon his shoulders. His heart is racing, he should let go, but Bilbo is drunk and still clumsy, and _he_ is perhaps drunk, too, and not clumsy but _weak._ Lost to this, to the simple maddening sensation of gripping Bilbo tightly and holding him at arm’s distance, studying the shape of his mouth while he laughs. “Oops,” Bilbo says, wheezing. “Goodness. You know, a few months ago, I would have apologized for that. Apologized for _falling,_ and isn’t that terrible? To feel sorry for losing one’s balance? I was a fidgety, foolish, shameful man when you met me, Thorin, but now…this has changed me. You, the company, the danger, the thrill… _you—_ ,” he pauses there, unfocused gaze sweeping up Thorin’s chest with helpless abandon for a moment before focusing prudently on his mouth, his eyes. Everything is fire, then, and Thorin holds his breath. “ _You_ have changed me.” 

“You’re drunk,” Thorin says, letting go of Bilbo and immediately turning back to the obsidian glint of the lake, mouth dry, heart choking him. And he could leave it at that, turn on his heel after bidding Bilbo good night and refilling his mug so that he might drown the half of his orange until it is forgotten, but. The stars are watching him, and so is Bilbo, and before he can lie, he is murmuring, “Would you believe that since this quest began, I am different, too?” 

Bilbo scoffs, leaning against the railing unsteadily with his elbows. “Yes, I would because I've seen it for myself,” he quips, sipping his ale. “You were _grumpier,_ at first. And you hated me.” 

The words fall, heavy and poisonous, into Thorin’s gut, making him shift his weight uncomfortably for a moment before confessing. “Bilbo, I never hated you.” 

“You did!” he insists, rounding on him, stumbling again until he pitches dangerously close once more, sloshing ale on Thorin’s boots. The sizzle of the foam seems far away, tertiary to the sound of Thorin’s own blood roaring in his ears, to the sensation of Bilbo hauling himself upright with his fists in Thorin’s borrowed tunic. “Or, at least, you did not respect me. It wasn’t until I killed the warg and proved I had at least the _merest inkling_ of warrior sensibility did you even _begin_ to give me—”

“No,” Thorin says gently, steadying Bilbo, righting him so that he may study him, hang himself in the dark, storm-sick blue of his eyes. “I never hated you, I only feared for your life. And I may have, at one time, resented that fear but never you.” 

Bilbo is quiet, flattening his lips into a twitching, uncertain line before he tears his gaze away from Thorin toward the still, black waters of the lake, like he might find something there. “Well,” he says. “That is a relief, I suppose.” Then he heads toward the wall and carefully lowers himself to the ground so that he is sitting, the noise from the party still bustling behind him. 

“You’re blocking the doors,” Thorin observes. “And my way back in.” 

“And anyone else’s way out. What an inconvenience,” Bilbo sighs, smiling up at Thorin faintly. It is warm, like the light of a far-away window on the horizon, promising something safe just beyond its glass. It makes Thorin tired. It makes him want to lie down. “I think I would like to sleep out here, under Durin, the plow-pony, and all the other stars,” Bilbo announces, as if he is reading Thorin’s mind. “Might you join me?” 

Thorin does not say yes or no, he simply sighs and sits down beside Bilbo Baggins. Eventually, he closes his eyes. Their shoulders touch, and they say nothing for what feels like a long, long time. 

“I wish we had your furs,” Bilbo slurs eventually. 

“Are you cold?” Thorin asks, making a silent fist by his thigh, clenching desperately at nothing. _I could hold you,_ he thinks wildly, ale on his tongue, the whole world swimming dizzyingly before him. _I could kiss your fingers until they thawed. I could do anything. I_ would _do anything._

“No. I only—it smells like a fishmonger’s shop out here, doesn’t it? Your cloak smells lovely, though, it would always help me sleep when you lent it to me. I’d bury my face in it and inhale, and then—that was it, I’d be off.” 

Thorin’s stomach drops as he turns ever so slightly, letting his face brush against the topmost curls of Bilbo’s hair. He smells like citrus and salt, and he doesn’t open his eyes when Thorin sucks in a shaky, longing breath. “What did it smell like?” He asks, breath a close, hot, shared thing. 

“Like—woodsmoke, mostly. From the fire,” Bilbo whispers. A silence stretches between them, seeming to last an eternity, and during that eternity, Thorin dies one hundred times over. His heart stops, his breath slows, and he is buried and buried and buried, and maybe—maybe none of this matters. Maybe the whole of his life after the Blue Mountains has been a dream. Maybe Bilbo Baggins is a fiction he created, and _that_ is why he’s so perfect. Thorin could reach out and touch him, right now, and Bilbo would _let_ him, because he is not real. Maybe Bilbo would open up raw and too fresh like some late-winter bud beaten into a premature bloom by the rain, were Thorin to kiss him. And maybe that would be alright: he isn’t real, Thorin’s dead, and kisses between dreams and dead men don’t count, you cannot be condemned for them come judgement. “And you, I suppose. Your hair oil, your sweat,” Bilbo breathes, voice so faint it almost disappears into the sound of the lake’s rhythmic lapping against the dock. 

Thorin’s hand moves beyond his own will to cup Bilbo’s cheek. The skin is hot under his palm, like holding a coal, and he can taste the liquor on his breath, everything smells like oranges, but then, but _then,_ the doors push open and send them scattering like insects from a sudden light. Thorin scrambles until he’s standing, and once the pressure of his body is relieved, half the company spills out into the night as the hall’s occupants burst out. “There you are!” Bofur exclaims, drunker than anyone else, nearly tumbling to his knees. “We were looking for you both!” 

“See,” Bilbo slurs from where he remains sitting, blinking like he has been woken up, like everything he said before was from the mess of sleep. “Told you you were missed.” 

And just like that, Bilbo Baggins is real again, Thorin is alive again, and the weight of the world and of the mountain and of every piece of gold therein weighs upon him until he sinks. 

—-

When Thorin wakes in Erebor, his body is nothing but pain. 

Firelight bounces off vaulted ceilings, and he follows it helplessly with his eyes, trying in vain to find the remnants of death in the shadows like the remnants of sleep. As if death is something he can fall back into and forget all the bridges he has burned in his madness, all the hearts he has broken. All the unforgivable things he did in the name of protecting his kingdom, of protecting his love. 

When he was a boy, Dis would sometimes rouse him before dawn so that they could sneak through the hallways and slip away into the forges, crouching low and hidden to watch the mysterious, magical happenings in the pit of the mountain. He remembers the smell of molten metal and the steady, echoing symphonies of one hundred hammers all clinking away. He remembers the dense, smoky, humid air and how it burned his eyes, but he kept them forced open anyway, letting tears stream down his cheeks as he stared at the ribbons of gold running through the rock like scar tissue. 

But most of all, on those mornings, Thorin remembers clutching at his blankets and rolling back over as Dis tugged at his sleeve, whispering, _wake up, brother._ Even though there was nothing more exciting in his universe than the forges and all their secrets, he would still wish, deep inside himself, that he could stay here where it was quiet and dark and silent. Even as a child, there were things Thorin ran from. 

He wonders presently if Bilbo has already left for home. If he was so disgusted and frightened by Thorin’s conduct at the gates that he packed his bags, bid farewell to the rest of the company, and simply departed. As Thorin lies parched and aching in a hospital bed in the bowels of the lonely mountain, he doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t blame him at all. 

So he doesn’t ask for Bilbo when Oin comes to dab at his fever and tend to his wounds. It’s all he can think of, but he forces himself to stay silent, feigning weakness that steals his voice. He knows that the moment he opens his chapped lips, it will come out, so he forces them shut, trembling in the chill of the room as Oin bathes him in turpentine. 

It stings. Thorin feels eviscerated, as if all he once was is outside himself now, bled out into the ice on Ravenhill, as if he’s nothing but a shell, the shed husk of an insect that emerged wet and new from its cocoon. Only he did not fly away, as an insect might. He brandished suspicion and rage and greed like battering rams, put fists in the oversized robe tied loosely across Bilbo Baggins narrow chest, and shattered everything he loved to dust upon the stone ramparts. And now he’s somehow still alive and must endure that. 

“Sleep, laddy,” Oin says, and Thorin’s not sure he's ever called him something so condescending and gentle, like he’s a child, and the rawness of it twists up in his gut, makes him sick with grief, with shame, with regret. “That fever will break eventually. Until then, rest,” Oin advises, wiping his brow. After he leaves, a quiet blackness approaches, and Thorin falls into its sway, dreaming of gold. Gold coins slipping under his boots, liquid gold molten hot against his skin, gold weighing him down, crushing his chest, spilling into his lungs. Gold and more gold, and somewhere beyond the endless, suffocating shine of it, Bilbo Baggins looking at him with wide and helpless eyes. Thorin reaches out, but Bilbo just becomes smaller in the distance, like a point of light in the night sky as Thorin drifts out to sea on a boat. _I’m so sorry,_ Thorin thinks, bobbing in the water, lost, gold-choked. _More than anything, I am sorry._

When Thorin next awakes, Bilbo is not a world away, lost on a distant shore. He’s _here,_ asleep at the foot of the bed, sprawled awkwardly in a chair that he must have dragged in. It’s too tall for him, with his heels barely dusting the floor, the bags beneath his eyes are heavier, shadowed, and still, he’s the loveliest and most impossible thing that Thorin has ever seen in the whole of his life. His breath catches, his stomach drops, and he wonders if he’s still dreaming. 

Thorin tries to speak, but it comes out as a coughing fit, his chest positively _searing_ with the effort, with the motion. Bilbo blinks and stretches, and when his gaze falls upon Thorin, he vaults up, his face a mask of worry, hands all over the sheets, before they twist in Thorin’s hair where it spills in tangles over his shoulders. “No, no, no, no, you’re not allowed to cough, you’ll tear your stitches, you’ll—wait, here, have some water, please,” he sputters, reeling back and forcing the glass on the bedside table into Thorin’s clumsy hands. 

Bilbo studies him as he swallows, his eyes wide and storm-dark but still somehow the brightest stars in the room. Brighter than the fire, brighter than all the gold and every jewel hidden in the mountain. “Ah, there you go,” Bilbo says quietly, perching on the edge of the bed. It barely bows under his weight, and Thorin notices that he’s more frail than the last time he saw him, as if he has not eaten properly since Ravenhill. After swallowing with some difficulty, Thorin manages to rumble, “You’re too thin.” Then, without even realizing it, his fingers bump up against Bilbo’s wrist, brushing over the jutting bone of it. They both freeze in the darkness, but Bilbo doesn’t pull away. 

“Well, yes, it’s been a somewhat trying time, with you and Fili and Kili all injured…difficult to find an appetite when your friends are in recovery,” Bilbo murmurs. “I—it’s so very good to see your eyes, Thorin. I feared they may not ever open again.” 

Thorin swallows thickly because there’s too much to say. _I’m so sorry. More than anything, I am sorry_ keeps resurfacing, though, blacking out everything around it, staining the darkness even darker. But when he opens his mouth to confess it, Bilbo shakes his head. “Don’t speak. My _being_ here is conditional upon keeping you from speaking or moving, so—well, I suppose it's best if I take to my chair again, and you take to sleep. I shall dream much easier knowing that you’ve woken up. And upon having—well. Seeing the blue of your eyes.” 

It makes Thorin’s heart clench tight, a thickness rise sudden and painful in his throat. “Stay,” he rasps. “Please.” 

“Shhhh! Yes, _yes,_ of course, I will,” Bilbo scolds, leaning forward, his knee pressing solid and sweet into Thorin’s thigh. And, oh—he can hardly care anymore. He wants to ruin petals, he wants soot in his bed. He wants and he wants, and he thought the only way to drown this want was to die, but here he is, still, cursing the infernal beat of his heart. The way it is no longer his own, ever speeding and stopping and starting again as Bilbo Baggins pulls a string. “Of course, I’ll stay.” 

That steady touch of his knee is an anchor point, and Thorin hangs his whole self upon it. The shell of his body, the husk he’s become.

But Bilbo doesn’t return to his chair as promised. As the fire dies, he curls up beside Thorin without touching him save for that single knee, his body feather-light and close enough to touch were Thorin brave enough to reach for him. Breath is held, like treasures in palms. Like crushable exoskeletons, fragile and precious and tucked behind glass to admire. And there, they both sleep. 

——

Miraculously, Thorin’s wounds heal, even if other things don’t. 

None of the ruins he left in his wake disappear, so there is a series of burned bridges and tenuous political relations to tend to as he grows stronger. One mess per new scar, but he supposes it’s fitting. 

At first, Thorin believes the best way to mend things is to shoulder them. To throw himself into the role of King Under the Mountain and repair all that he shattered in his rage. However, it becomes increasingly and rapidly clear that he isn’t even remotely trusted by their former allies. Perhaps even amongst his own subjects, his kin. After all, gold still makes him dizzy, and the citizens of Laketown still regard him with contempt, even after he forks over their payment three times in an attempt to stitch that which he tore. The Woodland Realm is threatening to close its borders, and the weight of it all is unreasonable for a dwarf who planned to die gloriously in battle. A dwarf whose injured foot can still barely endure the weight of his body, let alone the weight of a political crisis, the weight of a city in tumult. 

So Dain takes the crown, and Thorin takes a journey because he realizes Erebor’s future is a brighter, more certain thing if the shadow of his mistakes aren’t blackening it like storm clouds, following him like a shadow. 

As it turns out, Bilbo Baggins requires a travel partner on his long-awaited journey back to the shire, so Thorin packs his bags and leaves his reclaimed homeland to wander back to the Blue Mountains yet again. He supposes this, too, is fitting: that he’s nothing more than the symbol required to galvanize troops, a blunt instrument used to pry a fissure into a chasm, but once the task is complete, he _still_ belongs nowhere, eternally damned to chase an impossible prize across Middle Earth, and back again. 

It’s strange to be on the road as a pair. Before, Thorin had other perils to navigate, other companions to sit with, other faces to direct his focus. If Bilbo was overly distracting, he could busy himself elsewhere, but not this time. There’s nothing left to care for and nowhere else to look, so eventually Thorin stops attempting to punish himself for getting lost in studying Bilbo, for committing every small, terrible detail to memory so that he may turn the collection of images over gently and carefully in his palms as he drifts to sleep each night. Bilbo’s quick, clever burglar’s hands, pale and scarred. His slate-gray eyes, the ever-present shadow of sadness in them, like he, too, lost everything he built his life upon saving. His troublesome mouth, twitching around the stem of Thorin’s pipe that he now borrows without asking, the corners always moments away from turning down into a frown, even when he’s laughing. There are so many things that Thorin would kiss. So many places he’d like to touch, blacken with ash, tear into with teeth. So many things left to ruin, since that is apparently all he can do with his love. 

He cannot place his bed roll opposite a company that does not exist, and oftentimes the nights grow too cold, so they must share blankets. Bilbo doesn’t seem to mind his proximity, though. He lies close enough that his warmth bleeds through their clothes, and Thorin thinks of that solitary night in Laketown that feels as if it happened a lifetime ago. He thinks of Bilbo’s soft, ale-sloppy voice murmuring about how his cloak smells lovely, _like woodsmoke mostly, from the fire._ _And you, I suppose. Your hair oil, your sweat._ His heart clenches up to remember how different things were a single night before he went and ruined all that he hoped for. All that he built. 

_I’m so sorry,_ he thinks as Bilbo sleeps beside him, twitching in his dreams, the lids of his eyes papery and blue-tinted and so soft-looking that Thorin can imagine their tenderness beneath the press of his own lips. _More than anything, I am sorry._

“It’s Durin,” Bilbo mutters one very clear night as they lie side by side, Thorin’s hair touching Bilbo’s shoulder in this way that he cannot stop staring at, gaze snagging over and over again upon the stark contrast. Thorin hardly registers what Bilbo says, so he points, then, lazily connecting stars with the tip of his fingers, drawing an inexpert shape in the sky. “There, right? That giant diamond with the big star at the topmost point?” 

Thorin flattens his lips, moved that Bilbo remembers at all. “So it is.” 

“That night seems so long ago,” Bilbo murmurs, settling closer, the heat of his body so maddening that Thorin must close his eyes. “I remember…I was stunned, frankly, that you were speaking to me. I was still half-terrified of you at that point. Thought you’d rip up my contract and send me on my merry way for risking your safety too many times. I never imagined you might end up my dearest friend. What—what a lucky turn of events.”

Thorin shakes his head, wets his lips, heart lurching so suddenly that he feels sick with it. “It is I who is lucky to call you my friend.” 

Bilbo hums lightly and rolls over so that he’s facing Thorin, close enough that he can smell the smoke on his vest, the salt on his breath. “I’m so very glad you’re here,” Bilbo whispers, eyes unreadably complex in the dark. 

_Stay. Or at least let me stay. Beg me to stay,_ Thorin thinks wildly, hand moving beyond his own accord and fumbling between their bodies to grip with helpless desperation in Bilbo’s tunic. He doesn’t pull away, though. He allows himself to be dragged closer, allows Thorin to press their brows together to steady himself, as if he senses how Thorin feels like the world is ending around them. Or perhaps that it has already ended, and they’re the only two souls left on earth. He spreads his fingers in the tangle of their clothes, and Bilbo gasps, a sudden huff of air that Thorin sucks down because all his lungs want are Bilbo Baggins’s exhalations. “You must stop me,” Thorin murmurs, eyes caught on the slick wound of Bilbo’s parted mouth. “Or else I will do something very foolish and very selfish.” 

Bilbo laughs at that, frantic and breathy, and Thorin groans as he tastes it, shifting closer, so dizzy that he feels drunk on the shape of a body in his arms. “Foolish, maybe,” Bilbo whispers. “But are you quite sure it’s selfish?” And then, light and sweet and uncertain, Bilbo’s fingers brush up Thorin’s sternum to his throat where they come to rest upon the swift thunder of his pulse. 

Thorin cannot trust, nor can he believe. He sees blood and soot and crushed flowers and armies vast as the sea beyond the stone cage of the ramparts, and he will not take, he _cannot._ So instead he wavers as Bilbo notches steadily closer until their legs slot together, until he presses flush and solid to Thorin’s thigh, grinding against him _._ Thorin sobs weakly, and Bilbo kisses the corner of his mouth. It is gentle and chaste but only just. “Please,” he murmurs, taking Thorin’s hand in his own and bringing it to his hip, pushing it up under the hem of his shirt so that Thorin’s palm is spread wide over hot, bare skin. “Touch me.”

And so Thorin does. Their next kiss is neither gentle, nor chaste. He cups Bilbo’s cheek in one hand and mauls the smooth flesh in his fist with the other, licking the seam of his lips apart to taste, to _drown._ Every second, he’s afraid that he misunderstood, convinced that Bilbo will suddenly pull away in fear, in rage, but somehow it never happens. Bilbo is breath and heat and slickness; he sucks Thorin’s tongue and rubs over him with restless, greedy hands. His hair, his back, and then, with his head thrown back and gasping, between the mad shift of their bodies together, like he’s searching for something in earthquake rubble, digging for a pearl amid sand. Thorin groans where his mouth is spread upon Bilbo’s throat, eyes fixed on the way that he’s undressing for him, rolling his trousers down over his hips and kicking them away, rucking the last few buttons open on his shirt to lie pale and exposed like night-blooming jasmine.

 _“_ You are a dream _,_ ” Thorin prays in a torn voice, stunned by the softness, the pallor, the vulnerability. The way that Bilbo spreads under him with wet, pleading, half-lidded eyes, his cock so hard and glistening against his stomach. “I am dreaming.” 

“Let it be a good dream, then,” Bilbo murmurs, Thorin’s long black hair in his gasping mouth, tangled through his fingers, spilling over his pale sternum. A sea of black, the night and all of its stars watching. “Let it— _oh,_ Thorin,” he moans as Thorin holds him split and covers him, grinds him into the earth beneath the weight of his body. “Please let me feel your skin. Let me smell you,” he groans, tugging at Thorin’s clothing, hungry and raw. Thorin is so drunk with want that he does whatever Bilbo says, shrugging his own tunic off his shoulders, showing his scars to the night. Bilbo traces them with his fingers and then with his mouth. He leaves streaks of spit to shine in the moonlight and buries his face in Thorin’s underarm to suck the sweat from dark hair, matting it down with his tongue, rubbing himself in graceless, desperate bucks against the plane of Thorin’s thighs until he spills in pearlescent ribbons over his own chest, and yes, _yes_ , it is a good dream. The best and most precious. 

But the fragments of it do not fade. Reality presses against them: the sound of cicadas, the faint, easily broken promise of snow somewhere distant on the horizon. The angry jut of twigs and rocks beneath their now shared bed roll. The dying fire. The sensation of spit in his beard. 

Bilbo is still there, painted and panting, so Thorin collects the stickiness in both his hands and coats himself in it, double-fisted, like an animal. Then he kisses Bilbo through a storm of rutting, and when he finishes, it is not to the thought of crushed petals but to the taste of honey under his tongue. The smell of Bilbo’s dirty hair in his lungs. The feel of his sobbing gales of breath beneath his own thundering heart. Softness and salt and shocked, breathless laughter. Thorin collapses, and Bilbo fits himself into the cage of his arms as he continues to lick up his sweat, to scour his face raw upon the hair of his chest. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he confesses. “Wanted you to hold me, to break me, to—anything. Whatever it was you wanted of me, I wanted it, too. But I never—I never thought wanting it would end in me _having_ it. I’m afraid m’not deserving of such joy.” 

Thorin buries his face into Bilbo’s neck and sucks idly there. “No. You deserve more than this. More than a king without a kingdom, someone who is not a king at all. You are deserving of all the joy in the world,” he explains. He cannot stop touching, smoothing his hands greedily over the terrible softness, memorizing Bilbo’s angles, his curves, his bones. He deserves more, but he will give him all that he has in the meantime. 

“You are not my king, Thorin,” Bilbo reminds him then, tangling their fingers, blunt nails scraping against his palm. “You have never _been_ my king or my symbol of hope, or anything so grand as that…you have merely been the person I love, fruitlessly and from afar, until now. And I don’t love your _glory,_ you see, I love—I love the way that you smell. Your scars and your rare, lovely smile and how headstrong and stupid you are nearly _all_ the time. I love it all.” 

“Hmmm,” Thorin mumbles, kissing all the seldom-kissed places he’s fantasized about. Behind Bilbo’s ear. His sweat-damp temple. The point of his chin. It’s a lot to take in, but all he can do is listen and let unlikely truths lap up against him like waves against a shore. Eventually he may swim but not yet. He’s still getting used to the chill, to the tug and drag of the tide. To the beauty of the ocean. “I love all of you as well,” he admits, though he suspects it must be obvious. That every ounce of love he’s locked away and silenced bled through his palms, seeped into Bilbo’s skin, poisoned his bloodstream 

“Good,” Bilbo whispers, smiling. “But I _cannot_ let this go to your head. You are a base, raw, _real_ thing for me, Thorin,” he adds. “Not King Under the Mountain. Not even the _fallen_ King Under the Mountain. Just—my friend, my heart.” 

A blacksmith, not a symbol. Thorin lets his eyes flicker open, his gaze shift heavenward, and when he looks up, he does not see plow-ponies or buttercups or kings or warriors. He does not see all that he is not or all that he failed to be. He only sees stars and the infinite, hopeful stretch of black between them, like untilled earth ripe for planting. He takes Bilbo’s hand and squeezes it. 


End file.
